I like girls. I always have. I like everything about them. I love the female body, that is just the most obvious part of their loveliness. And I don’t just love the bits that seem obvious to love: of course perky, round, bouncy breasts are enticing. Of course a firm butt is adorable. Of course smirky smiles and smokey eyes are dreamy, but you know, guys have those things too. When it comes right down to it, girls are just rounder more attractive guys. Men are the half finished, flat and hard precursor to humanity perfected: the woman. The one thing that sets us apart are our particularly naughty bits down below. I mean, hello! guys have nipples (it just is an unfair society that let’s them show them off whenever they feel like it). But girls have the sweet, magical, confusing, mysterious, lovely, and quite controversial (to some old white men) baby dispensers. Give a woman a little genetic material, nine months, and bam! a brand new human ready to be molded by society.
So do I love women only because they can make little humans? Please, I am not that simple. Besides, I love vaginas even when they aren’t birthing babies. I even love vaginas when once a month the machinery goes completely haywire, chemicals burst out of their containment fields, and the resulting blown fuses make a girl weep, laugh, rage, and whimper like the world has ended in the same ten seconds. How much fun is that? A girl gets to be a colossal bitch or cry about anything and get away with it because PERIOD: the do-anything-and-get-away-with-it badge of humanity. To make it even better, girls usually get chocolate and wine and space when this monthly meltdown occurs. Be crazy and get gifts? why don’t more girls enjoy their periods?
Anyway, I caused a little bit of turmoil in my house even before I got a body that went nuts for no reason on a regularly scheduled cycle because I told my parents that I liked girls. I wasn’t supposed to do that, but I didn’t know that then. My parents were these religious, buttoned up, southern Protestants. So to have their seven year old daughter walk up to them one Sunday afternoon after church and announce: “I love girls” and then flounce away to play Barbies was a little shock to them. My parent’s Bible told them that boys loved girls and girls loved boys but not any other combination. Carefully, over the next few days, my parents pried out what exactly I meant by what I said and when it became clear that this wasn’t the normal “eww, boys/girls have cooties” thing that every kid has at that age, they freaked out. But, because I was not a “butch” (what a stupid description) girl, they didn’t know how to “fix” me. I already loved dress up and make up and Barbies and pink so thankfully they just sort of let it go. They never acknowledged that the girls I started bringing home when I got to middle school and high school were anything other than “playmates” (hehehe) or friends, but I guess since a lot of my other gay friends were being disowned or worse by their parents, indifference wasn’t that bad.
What? Am I a lesbian? Well first: duh. And second: what the hell is up with labels? I happen to think there are some gorgeous men out there, and dicks don’t bother me, I just prefer playing with girls. It’s inborn, it’s a choice, it’s a sliding scale and a fluctuating identity. Boys don’t like girls until they do. Otherwise no one would have cooties. I am who I am.
It is like me being a military aviator. Does that make me a soldier? Well, yes, I suppose it does. But I don’t really feel like a soldier. I just love to fly, and Uncle Sam lets me fly as much as I want. In some ways I had more of an issue with “being a lesbian” once I enlisted. My recruitment officer didn’t ask, I didn’t tell, but everyone knew. In my experience, gay guys in the military have it slightly easier than gay girls. For one thing, the overzealous frat boy bro culture of the military allows for male bonding and affection that gives a homosexual soldier the opportunity to express his feelings but not get caught doing so. But girls are relatively rare in the military, and thus are the object of every non-gay soldier’s affection. The girl that doesn’t respond so well to such affection is noticed immediately. Also, I tend to catch the eye of straight chicks, too, so I narrow the available dating pool and that isn’t preferred either.
But I do what I’ve done my whole life: I do my thing, I live my life, and I don’t care. Besides, who I love or what I’m labeled doesn’t matter when I am cruising at 30,000 ft at twice the speed of sound. When that is happening, nothing else matters. Oh, and by the way, that is one time I absolutely love having a hard stick between my legs.
Anyway, my name is Hallie Jordan, United States Air Force test pilot. But you can call me Hal.
Who are you and where am I? What?
Last thing I knew I was in an inverted dive over the North Atlantic, having taken off from the U.S.S. Enterprise twenty minutes earlier. My avionics went crazy, the stick went dead and I was diving towards the deck about to be crumpled like a tin can. I see wreckage over there, which apparently means that part of my aircraft survived the impact with planet earth and given my parachute and everything I must have ejected, but I didn’t see any island when I was up there.
What? Invisible? We’ll just move right past the part where the whole island is invisible, are you telling me that the NAVY has no way to locate me? Great. So how am I supposed to tell that pompous design nerd that his plane can’t fly worth a damn? I had $20 that said the altimeter would fritz first and I can’t wait to make him pay up.
Anyway. Hi, Diana. Thanks for saving my life. You got anything to eat around here? I’m starving and I’d rather not eat my rations unless I have to. Great. Lead the way…
a simple man 